Max
Max is a camper at Camp Campbell and the main protagonist of Camp Camp. His deeply cynical attitude about the camp clashes sharply with David's perky demeanor. His initial main goals included escaping the camp and "breaking David's façade". However, after Season 1, he has changed his focus to creating general mischief for his own amusement. Appearance Max is a relatively short kid with a thin build, floofy black hair, bluish-green eyes, and tan skin. He often has bags under his eyes. He wears a contrasting blue hoodie with a yellow Camp Campbell T-shirt underneath, blue jeans, and red shoes with white stripes and black laces. Personality Max is a jaded ten-year-old who is extremely pessimistic and seems to despise a wide variety of things and Camp Campbell. He is the troublemaker of the camp and enjoys snuffing out the joy of other campers and blackmailing Gwen just for the fun of it. Max himself even stated himself that there's, "Only one camper at Camp Campbell worse than Nurf, and it's me." Gwen even referred to Max as "Satan" in one episode. True to his pessimistic nature, Max is also much more mature than his fellow campers to the point of which Camp Counselors David and Gwen ask for his assistance regarding difficult issues. Due to his maturity, Max refuses to participate in childish activities and doesn't react to scary situations. He's also very intelligent for his age, avoiding the other campers' tricks and crafting his own for his own amusement. Despite Max's cold disposition, he does have his moments. At the end of "The Order of the Sparrow," Max manages to convince the entire camp to help him create the perfect summer camp just for David. In "Parent's Day," it's confirmed that Max's parents are in fact negligent. Max's file reveals that his parents failed to select a specific camp for him, suggesting that they didn't care what he was there for, only that he was gone. Max's file only includes his first name and age, implying that his parents didn't even care enough to include his last name or any way to be contacted in case of an emergency. Max shows visible distress when seeing the other camper's parents care for them and even begins tearing up when his neglected status is revealed. At the beginning of "Keep the Change", Nikki and Neil point out that Max's attitude has lightened up a bit since the beginning of the summer, which even David and Gwen agree with. These points shock him, insisting he hasn't changed, that he's still a "cynical rebel" and a "one-man hell raiser", and that people can't and don't change. To prove these points, he spends the rest of the episode, as well as "Cameron Campbell Can't Handle the Truth Serum", trying to undermine Campbell's attempts to better himself. Although Campbell remains mercifully oblivious to these efforts, Max is extremely and repeatedly insistent that personal growth is impossible. Max still remains highly adverse to change in "The Butterfinger Effect", repeatedly rejecting the notion that change can often be positive when faced with his fellow campers' behavior suddenly and drastically skewing. In the end, he admits that he has made some change in his own right, and even recognizes it in the following episode "Time Crapsules". After sincerely feeling bad for (and understanding the consequences of) hurting Gwen's feelings, he realizes that this is due to his own change in personality. None of this would have been openly admitted to in previous seasons. However, he does not make a genuine personal effort to make her feel better (until his apology at the burial ceremony); rather, he blatantly copies David's behavior in several interactions with her, especially in his opening lines of apology. If nothing else, at least he learned something in the way of positivity and conflict-solving skills from David, which is partially what has "rubbed off" on Max that Nikki mentions in the season premiere. The other part is a generally calmer nature and occasional willingness to help (in his own way) such as his unique method of wrangling money in "The Fun-Raiser" and grand master plan to take back the camp in "Camp Corp." By the end of season 4, Max hasn't fully become "a better person" as initially claimed, in that he only wanted to help Gwen for selfish reasons, so he still has more growing to do. Affiliation Trivia * Unlike the other campers, Max's parents "didn't care" enough to sign him up for a specific camp, leaving him without a purpose at Camp Campbell, which is revealed in the episode "Parents' Day". ** The fact that Max's parents just left his papers with only his first name and age written on it, without revealing his last name, contact number, or any other information proves that his parents didn't care for him at all, to the point where if something bad were to happen to Max, the camp would not be able to contact his family about it or take him back. ** Their neglect may also be why he hoped the other campers' parents would fail at supporting their children, insinuating that Max may be jealous of how the other kids' parents care for them and his own don't. He was remorseful that Space Kid's parents couldn't make it to Parents' Day, but went right back to being grumpy when it turned out his uncle was coming instead. * Max and David are the only characters whose ages have been clearly established. With Max's age (10) being revealed by Gwen in "Gwen Gets a Job", later confirmed in "Parents' Day". And with David's age (24) revealed in his Tinder profile in "Romeo & Juliet II: Love Resurrected". * Contrary to popular belief, his full first name has not been confirmed to be "Maxwell", "Maximilian" or even "Maximus"; these are actually from other people making assumptions. Pikeman has mis-named him twice, calling him Maxwell in "Gwen Gets a Job" and Maximus in "New Adventure!", and Preston called him "Maximilian" in "Nikki's Last Day on Earth." Even the registration form shown in "Parents' Day" only had the name "Max" on it, so whether or not it is indeed a nickname remains to be seen. ** While discussing Ered's nickname in "Camp Cool Kidz", Nikki calls Max a "first-part nicknamer", indicating that "Max" may not be his full first name. * Max has a hidden talent: tap dancing. In "The Forest", during the scene where he addresses everyone to keep it a secret, a couple of obvious tap-shoe clicks can be heard as he walks, and his shoes are clearly black instead of the usual red. Other hints include Nerris' snicker about Max's (dance) routine, and Nurf also saying he'd rather "tap out" than give away the secret. * Max has repeatedly been shown to have excellent sleuthing skills, much like a detective, and it could be argued that this could be the specific type of camp he should have been signed up for. ** In season 1, he took charge of locating Neil in "Reigny Day", trailed David around and questioned multiple townsfolk about him in "Into Town", and took a "Journey to Spooky Island" to prove the island wasn't haunted and had very thorough and logical explanations for everything. ** In season 3 he made a thorough investigation into Quartermaster's missing hook in "The Fun-Raiser", went searching for the story of Jasper's death (and David's involvement) in "Dial M For Jasper", and thoroughly (and anxiously) collected information on David's odd behavior in "Arrival of the Torso Takers". ** In season 4, the episode "Who Peed the Lake" was practically a full-on police investigation from start to finish, with him even wearing a deerstalker cap and calling himself the "camp detective." "New Adventure!" also gives him an opportunity to put his skills to use by searching for whoever stole Gwen's "feminine haptic devices", though the actual investigation was performed off-screen. * Max has a habit of stealing and digging through David's personal information and belongings, such as when he asked for David's Social Security Number in exchange for helping him with the behavioral boot camp in the episode "David Gets Hard", using David's credit card in order to pay for his pre-order of 500 cookies from the Flower Scouts in exchange for their help getting David and Bonquisha back together in "Bonjour Bonquisha", or to simply to order himself pizza like in "Parents' Day". He also used it to take a picture of the stolen Quartermaster's hook Gwen was hiding in her shorts in "The Fun-Raiser", taking pictures of the other campers' attempts to be cool in "Ered Gets Her Cool Back", and even taking money out of David's wallet and leaving a note that he'd done so in "The Forest". ** David is aware of the fact that Max often steals his phone, shown in "Camp Corp." Upon the start of unveiling his plan to get the camp back, he says, "someone get me a cell phone" and David replies, "I'm pretty sure you stole mine." At the end of the same episode, Max's pocket starts ringing, he then takes out David's phone and hands it to him. He didn't make any demands for his phone back, or even scold Max for taking it. ** Oddly, Neil was seen holding David's phone and commenting on how many service bars he was getting as they drove into the city in "City Survival". * Max has a knack for finding people's personal information and often blackmailing them with it. Such examples include threatening to tell David that Gwen is out job hunting in "Gwen Gets a Job", finding David's journal in "Arrival of the Torso Takers", stealing David's phone and actively messaging women without his knowledge in "Romeo & Juliet II: Love Resurrected", and spying on Gwen's date with Graggle in "Something Fishy". And of course, the biggest and best example of his blackmailing skills thus far would be his entire plan and its execution to take back the camp in "Camp Corp." * Max is shown to have a habit of looking up "what do boobies look like" whenever he gets his hands on anything that's connected to the internet, shown in both "Romeo & Juliet II: Love Resurrected" and "Anti-Social Network". * He has also shown to be able to sound suave enough for online women to think that they're actually talking to a man their age to the point where he leads them on and breaks their heart, unaware that they're only talking to a ten-year-old.Romeo & Juliet II: Love Resurrected * In "Camp Cool Kidz", Max reveals that his parents left their home country, which reveals that Max's ethnic background is likely not entirely American. In "Journey to Spooky Island", he also claims that "people in sheets got him concerned," which could be taken as a reference to the Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist cult that hates and targets non-Caucasian ethnicities. ** In "The Order of the Sparrow," Max is implied to be of Indian descent after David claims that he is like an Indian chief, which Neil replies with, "Like Max?" He was also offended by David's costume, saying "Wow, that is racist." in response to David's "WOWOWOWOWOWO!" This might be pointing out the fact that people constantly call Native Americans "Indians" by mistake, causing Max to get offended because he is actually Indian, not Native American. ** "Culture Day" confirms that Max is in fact Indian when the campers are tasked to show off their own cultural heritage. While leaning against his booth he said, "Uhh, this is my Hindu culture, represented by a picture of Ghandi, who I'm choosing to say is my cousin." Gwen simply shrugs and says that this is more effort than she expected of him. * As shown in "Journey to Spooky Island," he is not easily scared, although he is visibly disturbed in some specific instances, such as when he witnesses Quartermaster and his friends taking part in sexual affairs in the dungeon underneath Campbell's Summer Home, or when he was forced to regurgitate a bunch of handkerchiefs connecting to Ered's skateboard, a rabbit and Quartermaster's hook, as well as when Jermy suddenly butts into their huddle in the episode "Jermy Fartz". * It is a reasonable guess that Max has some form of depression, due to his neglectful parents, and the fact that he once stated that he cries himself to sleep in "Into Town". *In "Journey to Spooky Island", Max revealed that he wants to commit suicide saying, "What's scary is how much I want to kill myself right now" in response to David's not-so-spooky story about the dog that got caught in his laundry. **In the same episode it's shown that he's also aware of what religious repression is when hearing moaning and wailing coming from the darkness around him, implying that he has some kind of personal issue (or issues) that he is repressing. **He also doesn't believe in the afterlife, cheerfully stating, "When you die, you're faced with eternal nothingness. It's gonna be great." **In "Attack of the Nurfs", Max references suicide again. David compliments his attempt at art, saying Max reminds him of the famous painter Vincent van Gogh. Max's response is, "I definitely wanna kill myself like van Gogh." (He died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at the ripe old age of 37.) * In an effort to isolate himself from the world, he 3D-printed a sensory deprivation tank in "Attack of the Nurfs". While not necessarily a sign of depression or suicidal tendencies, he does have a particularly strong desire to isolate himself from the world. When one of the Nurf copies opens the door and drains the water from his tank, Max is left laying on the ground saying, "so this is the feeling that drivers murderers over the edge." * In the season 4 premiere "Keep the Change", Nikki states that Max has lightened up a bit, potentially thanks to David's happy-go-lucky influence. Conversely, she states that David has changed, as his method of "pushing Campbell in the right direction" to show him becoming a better person was to get a robber to come threaten the camp. At the end of the episode, Nikki states that David and Max are really rubbing off on each other. Their response is a synchronized, "oh my god" and staring down at their own hands in disbelief. ** Oddly enough, despite Max having an arc across season 4 about learning to accept change and recognizing his own improvement, there was no follow-up for David. Aside from stooping so low as to hire the robber in the premiere, there has been no indication whatsoever of David's attitude getting worse or more "Max-like". * Max has an undeniable love of dogs; when Gwen's father turns up at the camp with the family dog, Max immediately gushes about how cute she is, and is constantly remarking about it for the rest of the episode. It's also the first time he's been very openly excited about an animal, as he states that "I never thought I'd be this happy." ** He did show affection for the newborn platypus hatchling in "Eggs Benefits" before it was promptly eaten by its mother, but his actions here are a lot more obvious (and extremely adorable). * Max is skilled in knitting, as shown when he was able to knit a cloth dummy of himself in "Escape from Camp Campbell," as well as additional dummies for Neil and Nikki. ** He is also seen to be skilled in knot tying as shown in "Camp Cool Kidz" when David compliments his skills, and in the same breath comments how torn he is that Max used this skill to tie him and Gwen onto the flagpole at the start of the campers' rebellion. * Before Neil and Nikki, Max apparently had at least one friend in Camp Campbell, Chucky, whom he mentions he misses in "Reigny Day". * Max and Neil share a tent. This is mentioned in "Reigny Day" when Max says, "Well, more tent for me" after everyone assumed that Neil was dead, and later proven in "Mind Freakers" after he is seen waking up while Neil was eager to find out how Harrison did the trick. ** Max and Neil also share a coffee maker that's propped up on a log, shown in "Mind Freakers". Max drinks the coffee it brews from a white "NOPE" mug that's been seen in "Anti-Social Network" and "Operation: Charlie Tango Foxtrot". * Max wears his blue hoodie over his yellow shirt as an act of rebellion. It's stated that he would rather sweat through it all day than show that he's from Camp Campbell. * Max has a teddy bear named Mr. Honeynuts, who was revealed in "Gwen Gets a Job". * Max is the only character to have appeared in every episode of the show. * In "A Camp Camp Christmas, or Whatever," Max, along with Neil and Nikki, sing their first ever song in the series. * Max is shown to have a sweet tooth, as revealed in "Foreign Exchange Campers", and more prominently shown in "Cameron Campbell the Camp Campbell Camper". * In "Something Fishy" Max is seen to wear his watch on his right wrist in the boat, making it likely he is left-handed. * In "Who Peed the Lake", it is revealed that Max is the only character who can't swim, and it's stated that he'd "rather die" than let David find that out, as he would then be forced to take swimming lessons. Space Kid had been given swimming lessons from David earlier in the summer to be able to learn to swim. * Max was referenced during Michael Jones' verse in the Achievement Hunter Rap Battle. Gallery References Category:Campers Category:Camp Campbell campers Category:Characters Category:Male characters Category:Camp Campbell characters